The Birdwatcher by William Shaw Read Free Book Online

was always happy when she was coming.’
    ‘Nothing else?’
    ‘He said that he wouldn’t be around for a couple of days. She wasn’t that keen on birds. To be honest, now I think about it, he never talked that much about anything else.’
    She stood, looked at her watch. ‘Because he didn’t have anything to say? Or because he had something to hide?’
    He would have to watch her, he thought. ‘The second, I think, maybe.’
    ‘Why?’
    He thought for a minute. ‘There was so much he didn’t talk about, in retrospect.’
    She returned his look with a curious smile on her face; he turned away to avoid her gaze.
     

     
    Billy’s house was a two-up two-down on the edge of the estate. He had the back bedroom next to the bathroom, looking up towards the mountains.
    ‘Careful,’ Billy said to Sergeant Ferguson. ‘The carpet’s loose.’ Mum had kept badgering Dad to nail it back down but he never had.
    Billy pushed the door to his bedroom open; the copper stepped inside. ‘So, I guess that you like birds?’
    ‘Yep,’ answered Billy.
    ‘I never knew that.’
    Almost every spare inch of the walls was covered in pictures of birds, some from magazines, most drawn himself with coloured pencils. He preferred the photos. The ones he had drawn himself were a bit rubbish. And his handwriting underneath, naming each bird, was crap.
    A sudden panic as he realises the can of Flamenco Red spray-paint is lying there, in full bloody view, right on his floor. Everything started with that can of red paint. He wishes he had never nicked it. Billy looks up anxiously, but Ferguson hasn’t spotted it. He is peering at a drawing of a pied wagtail. With a gentle kick, Billy nudges it under the bed, and hears the tiny ball bearing rocking back and forward in the can as it settles.
    ‘Nice,’ Ferguson said, pointing at the drawing.
    How can Ferguson not have heard that?
    ‘What do you do when you run out of wall? Start on the ceiling?’ He grinned at the boy.
    ‘They don’t stick to the ceiling. They fall down,’ said Billy.
    ‘Course they do. Stupid idea. You know all the names and everything?’
    It was just conversation, Billy thought, to make him feel better. ‘Yep,’ he said.
    ‘I never knew. And your mates at school? Are they into this?’
    ‘Not much. They don’t get it, really.’
    ‘Know what I heard? There’s a snowy owl been spotted up on the mountains there.’ He nodded towards Billy’s window.
    ‘I heard that too. I been going up there to look for it at weekends. Got soaked last Saturday. Mum says I’m mad.’ He grinned.
    ‘That would be something, wouldn’t it, seeing that?’
    Billy nodded.
    ‘Did your father like birds too?’
    Billy said, ‘Not much.’
    ‘No. I suppose not. Not that kind of fellow.’
    Hated them, in fact; had thought his son was a fucken sissy for liking them, but Billy didn’t say anything. Dad had wanted him to like cars, like he had. Sergeant Ferguson shook his head and looked at him in a way that Billy thought meant he must be feeling sorry for him. That made Billy feel angry, embarrassed. No one should be feeling sorry for him.
    He went over to his chest of drawers and fiddled with a Corgi car that sat on top of it and then turned. He could still just see the lid of the can of paint in the gloom under his bed.
    If this was Starsky and Hutch the policeman would have spotted it now, thought Billy.

FOUR
    ‘What’s the matter? Why won’t they let me in?’ Gill Rayner asked. ‘It’s my brother’s house.’
    They had walked down the short lane to Bob’s house to meet her there. ‘The Crime Scene team say they’re going to need a little longer, I’m afraid,’ said Cupidi.
    Gill Rayner was what South’s mother would have described as a no-nonsense woman. Short, manageable hair, little or no make-up, a clear complexion and dark brown eyes. They were bloodshot, presumably from crying.
    ‘It’s frustrating for us, as well,’ said Cupidi. ‘We need to get in